So, my first anime? I guess the question is which first anime? The first anime I saw without knowing it was anime? The first anime I saw in Japanese? The first anime I bought?

Ah, heck with it, I'll answer all three. :)

The Anime I didn't recognise as such: Robotech.

I suspect that the first anime I actually followed would have been Robotech in late high school / early university.

I started noticing it on Channel 7 in Perth and soon started noticing something new to me for television: continuity. If it happened, it was important and not forgotten.

There has been a lot of criticism levelled at Robotech, particularly of some of the censorship, that overlooks how much they did get past the radar. This is a kids show (bearing in mind the animation age ghetto) where characters die, and the deaths matter.

For all the changes that were made, the core of Macross was preserved and linked into a multi generation saga that works remarkably well as a coherent story. The overall arc does have problems, but at least it is there.

The first anime in Japanese: Gall Force

Sometime later there was an introduction to some anime at a friends house. This would have been in the late eighties and I think it involved an unsubtitled episode of Gall Force, possibly Rhea Gall Force.

That was a strange experience but there was...something about the storytelling, the pacing that drew my attention. The presence of female action heroines (plural, most of the cast in fact) would also have been unusual enough to draw my attention.

From there I drifted in to looking for this stuff more and more.

The first anime I bought: Vampire Princess Miyu

It wasn’t too long before JAFWA started up in a church hall with one VCR feeding poor quality copies to three televisions.

Sometimes there were synopses. If we were lucky there were fan subtitles of...varying quality.

Somewhere in there I saw a fan subtitle of the Vampire Princess Miyu OAVs and that must have been the moment when I was hooked for good.

To quote from my review some time back: Possibly the best aspect about this series is that you aren't spoonfed with answers. Drowned in questions perhaps, with the few answers provided spawning only more questions.

The Vampire Princess Miyu OAVs were probably the first Laser Disc I bought (and I certainly bought the discs before I had the player for them), and I’ve never regretted it. More here.

First I saw and didn't recognise was almost certainly Battle of the Planets (aka Ninja Science Team Gatchaman) cleaned up for the western children's audience.

First anime in japanese was I think either Laputa (or part thereof) or Ranma 1/2 at one of the early Swancons. 17 or 18. Probably 17. Being at a Swancon my memory of which I actually saw first is a little vague.

First I bought: I haven't actually bought a huge deal of anime. I don't remember which was first. Wings of Honneamise or Dominion Tank Police. In terms of DVDs rather than VHS I think my first buy was Spirited Away.

To be honest from memory Wings may have been one I won as a door prize or similar. And I may have selected it purely on the basis of the fanvid someone did to 'Learning to Fly'It's not one I tended to rewatch.

Tank police was more fun, but don't plug VHS player in much these days.

I'm still missing a couple I think. Still don't have Kiki's Delivery Service or Pon-poko (sp?). I'd also quite like at some point to get the non-Miyazaki but Ghibli still Whisper of the Heart, while being fully aware that it makes 'Country Road' go through my head for days afterward.